from the bunnie-was-right dept

Techdirt has been keeping an eye on the world of "shanzhai" companies for a while now. The term originally meant those places in China that were outside government control, and so, by extension, it referred to Chinese outfits specializing in counterfeit goods. But shanzhai companies are moving on, as this fascinating piece in The Atlantic makes clear:

Shanzhai used to refer to knock-off retail, and later end-consumer electronics, such as mobile phones of major brands like Nokia, Motorola and Ericson, often specifically designed for non-Western markets in China, South East Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa. The ecosystem grew rapidly and by 2010, it was producing 200 million phones annually and was responsible for a quarter of the global mobile phone market. Since then, the shanzhai ecology has moved beyond cloning and enabled a wealth of iterative innovations including dual-SIM for frequent travelers to avoid roaming charges, seven-speaker phones for workers to listen to music at construction sites, and custom-designed phones for migrant populations unable to afford the latest smartphone.

Alongside those areas, here's an example of what's happening in the currently-fashionable sector of smart watches:

WPI [the Taiwanese electronic sourcing company World Peace Industrial] and other solution houses create gongban [standard circuit boards], which provide common electronic functions including Bluetooth connectivity to mobile phones, and sensors to measure the wearers' movement, as well as monitor heart rate and other vital bodily statistics. These gongban are designed to fit into a variety of gongmo [standard cases] that are ready to be branded on order. The flexibility to mix and match gongban and gongmo enable companies to quickly put together their own smart watches with customized functions and styles for various niche markets. Today, customers of WPI ship close to 100,000 smart watches per month.

That is, the shanzhai system is starting to adopt a highly-flexible approach that allows customized products to be designed and manufactured extremely quickly from sets of standardized parts. This has much in common with free software's modular developmental methodology, and next-generation shanzhai companies are also borrowing open source's business models:

That is, WPI gives away the basic designs to encourage their uptake, and then makes money from supplying the large open ecosystem that it creates by doing so. As Andrew "bunnie" Huang predicted, China's shanzhai sector has moved on a long way from simply copying, and is now innovating in multiple ways that industries in other countries could usefully learn from.

from the the-finer-things dept

In the realm of both embracing new business models in video games and generally being an all around awesome company, it doesn't get a whole lot better than Double Fine. If we were to write a playbook for a gaming company, it would probably read like Double Fine's history, from producing enormously entertaining games, to embracing crowd-funding models, to treating their fans in a manner too rare in their industry.

Perhaps Bad Golf 2 will prove to be the One Direction of Double Fine's latest Amnesia Fortnight prototype-off. Not selected as a winning project in the X-Factorish voting, it seemed destined to never become a reality – until fans decided to make it anyway. And now it's generating more headlines than any of the "official" picks did.

That's because fourteen fans of Double Fine are collaborating on the company's own website to produce this game themselves. So, instead of the game never being produced, it will be realized by dedicated and passionate fans. While many companies might go berserk over this, Double Fine is not your average company. From the top down, everyone seems thrilled.

BG2 ideasmith Patrick Hackett, a ‘tech guru’ at Double Fine, told Eurogamer that “Personally, I was flattered by the idea that people would want to collaborate to make a game idea of mine. I really couldn’t have been more excited to hear about this idea and told them I’d support them as much as I could.”

“As for it being Double Fine’s property – Greg and I brought the situation up to Tim and Justin and they approved of the idea, citing that any production should remain in the creative commons. Because of that, the project’s source control repository is available for free and the final product will never be sold.”

This very specifically bucks every rebuttal typically offered by those that advocate for strong and stronger protection of intellectual property. Somehow, a company is giving free access to their own source code for a game based on IP the company developed, and is happy about doing so, while fans of the company are creating the game under the full knowledge that there won't be any monetary compensation. How could any of that be possible if we relied on the words of Electronic Arts and their ilk?

The answer is that creation and collaboration are a natural part of the human psyche, and they're spurred on when the collaborating parties all treat one another like human beings. Meanwhile, Double Fine is already taking an interest in the project's success as an avenue to then release their own Bad Golf 3 game, should the project pan out. Everyone wins, all because nobody brought the legal hammer down to protect their intellectual property and managed to treat their fans like human beings.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Year after year, news reports state that the US has horrible test scores in math compared to other countries. This leads commenters to speculate on the dismal future of the US economy and to complain about the weaknesses of the entire US educational system. However, international tests have never correlated that well with the relative economic performance of a country, so it's hard to see how bad test scores would accurately predict future economic rankings. There are plenty of things to try to fix in the US education system, but perhaps we should be planning a longer term strategy (instead of trying to turn the ship every election year) and focus on the evidence of what produces good educational results (if we can even agree on what results we want).

from the needs-some-work,-but... dept

As we noted last month, the community at Reddit responded to the whole SOPA mess by deciding that they should collaborate to write their own piece of legislation that protects internet freedoms. The first draft of the Free Internet Act is now available as an open Google doc, where there are additional edits and comments going on as we speak.

The Free Internet Act: To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation by preventing the restriction of liberty and preventing the means of censorship. FIA will allow internet users to browse freely without any means of censorship, users have the right to free speech and to free knowledge; we govern the content of the internet, governments don't. However enforcements/laws must also be put into place to protect copyrighted content.

Huffington Post has a good background article on how the bill was developed. Of course, as we noted when this originally started, there is something a bit naive about how they're going about it... but that's kind of what makes it exciting. It was that kind of naivete that actually enabled SOPA to be stopped. Most "experts" assumed it was a done deal and nothing could stop it. But along came folks such as the Reddit community who simply didn't know that SOPA couldn't be stopped... and they were instrumental in getting it stopped. So I'm excited to see what that same sort of open optimism can do on the proactive side, even if at points it feels naive or cringe-worthy.

Of course, at the same time, it's a little disappointing to see this:

"The idea is to aim high," the thread reads. "This is the same strategy employed by SOPA/ACTA pushers. We are aiming absurdly high, so that we can back down and reach a compromise."

The power of the Reddit community was that it aimed high and achieved. The fact that it stood by its principles rather than "looking for a compromise" was what worked. If you go into a process looking for a compromise, that's what you'll get. If you go into a process looking for the absolutely best solution then you're more likely to get that. People shouldn't be approaching a bill about internet freedom as if it's a fight between multiple parties and compromise is needed. This should be about creating a solution that is really important and really good for everyone. Then no compromise is needed at all.

Either way, this is an interesting process to watch. I'm not sure it will actually go anywhere, but I love the enthusiasm and the proactive initiative...

from the wonderful dept

Toney Rome contacted us to point our attention to a 14-minute video he put together, showing how music is collaborative. He claims this is episode one, so it'll be interesting to see if there will be more. He noted that he was inspired to put this video together after reading James Boyle's The Public Domain, which he first heard about when we mentioned it on Techdirt. I have to imagine that much of this video was inspired by Chapter 6, which traces a variety of songs related to Kanye West and Ray Charles. Instead of Kanye West, this video starts with Jay-Z:

While a few bits of the video seem extraneous and probably could be done without, what the video does nicely is track how even modern "original" music is very, very collaborative when you start to dig into the details. It talks about Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind, a song that has been redone hundreds of times, and notes how the underlying music loop is from The Moment's song Love on a Two-Way Street -- and how that song was written by Sylvia Robinson and two others (and how it also was covered and sampled a few other times before). Robinson, beyond being a recording artist, started Sugar Hill Records, and went on to put together the Sugar Hill Gang... who put out the first rap single to go gold: Rapper's Delight. That song, of course, was based on an (originally uncleared) sample of the classic disco song Good Times by the band Chic. The video has two clips of one of the songwriters of Good Times. In the first one, he talks about how his music was "sacred" and how annoyed he was to hear it sampled on Rapper's Delight without permission (eventually the two parties settled...). In the second clip, however, the same guy talks about how Good Times was actually pulling from Milton Alger's Happy Days Are Here Again and About a Quarter to Nine by Al Jolson. In other words... that song that was so "sacred" was built off of the works of others.

There's a lot more in the video, including a variety of other interesting tangents, including the fact that one of the lyrics from Rapper's Delight copied a lyric from another rapper so directly that it includes that rapper's name in the lyric. The video concludes with a great line:

Many musicians like to believe that they created their art by themselves, but most likely, it was collaboration.

We posted this Insight Community case a few weeks back, but wanted to repost it since time is running out on it. Once again, if you're unaware, the Insight Community is a way for companies to seek out insight and analysis from members of the Techdirt community. If you're a registered Techdirt user, then you're also a member of the Insight Community and are free to take part in this discussion. The top results can earn cash rewards, so this is a nice way to make some money for being smart.

Enterprise 2.0 has been a catch-all description for the shift towards better collaborative software tools that help groups communicate in real time to increase employee productivity. As part of this movement, IBM sees a progression away from a world centered on emails using Microsoft Word and Outlook.

Supporting this idea, IBM has a whitepaper entitled: "Collaboration 2.0 -- Taking Collaboration to the Next Level: From the E-mail and Document-centric World of 'Enterprise 1.0' to the People-centric World of Enterprise 2.0". Register to read it, and IBM would like your feedback on it.

Interesting critiques of this whitepaper include, but are not limited to, questions such as:

How can this whitepaper target its audience better?

What specific business communities would benefit most from employing Collaboration 2.0 tools?

How could this whitepaper be improved? What points could be added?

Given the recent demise of Google Wave, what lessons can be learned for collaboration software providers?

The type of insights we're looking for will generate useful discussions regarding the capabilities of collaboration tools. You can also tell us about your experiences using collaboration tools (what you like or don't like about them). Additionally, you can help us out by sharing this whitepaper with others and aggregating feedback on it. Ultimately, we're interested in creating an interesting collection of opinions (and factoids) for folks who might be evaluating various online collaboration apps. We may re-print your submissions as blog posts on other websites, and your insightful aphorisms may be quoted in future publications.

The topic of this Insight Community case is sponsored by IBM. Of course, the content of this case consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author(s) and not of IBM.

If you're unfamiliar with how our Insight Community works, companies use it to get insight and analysis from folks here in the Techdirt community. If you're a registered Techdirt user, then you're also a member of the Insight Community and are free to take part in this discussion. The top results can earn cash rewards, so this is a nice way to make some money for being smart.

Enterprise 2.0 has been a catch-all description for the shift towards better collaborative software tools that help groups communicate in real time to increase employee productivity. As part of this movement, IBM sees a progression away from a world centered on emails using Microsoft Word and Outlook.

Supporting this idea, IBM has a whitepaper entitled: "Collaboration 2.0 -- Taking Collaboration to the Next Level: From the E-mail and Document-centric World of 'Enterprise 1.0' to the People-centric World of Enterprise 2.0". Register to read it, and IBM would like your feedback on it.

Interesting critiques of this whitepaper include, but are not limited to, questions such as:

How can this whitepaper target its audience better?

What specific business communities would benefit most from employing Collaboration 2.0 tools?

How could this whitepaper be improved? What points could be added?

Given the recent demise of Google Wave, what lessons can be learned for collaboration software providers?

The type of insights we're looking for will generate useful discussions regarding the capabilities of collaboration tools. You can also tell us about your experiences using collaboration tools (what you like or don't like about them). Additionally, you can help us out by sharing this whitepaper with others and aggregating feedback on it. Ultimately, we're interested in creating an interesting collection of opinions (and factoids) for folks who might be evaluating various online collaboration apps. We may re-print your submissions as blog posts on other websites, and your insightful aphorisms may be quoted in future publications.

The topic of this Insight Community case is sponsored by IBM. Of course, the content of this case consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author(s) and not of IBM.

from the collaborative-writing dept

Here's a story that will get traditionalists up in arms about "stealing" and "laziness," but they'll all be missing the point. We've see for decades how remix culture works in music. The ability to take the works of someone else, mix them up with others, change them around and create something new and powerful, is a wonderful expression of culture, that shows how artistic culture is often about shared experiences and sharing works of art. But what about in the literary world?

There has been some exploration of this concept in the past, such as when author Jonathan Lethem wrote a very eloquent defense of plagiarism that was entirely plagiarized. Separately, we've discussed how many (especially younger people) who have grown up on things like Wikipedia often point out that they don't view it as plagiarism so much as collaborative writing. And they have a point (even if there's one patent lawyer in particular who links back to that article every few weeks to mock Techdirt). There will always be those who don't recognize how this is, in fact, collaboration and does create new and unique pieces of artwork and culture -- but they're the same sorts of people who have decried every new artform from the Waltz ("The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced... we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion") to romance novels and plays ("The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge") to comic books ("All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!").

But the good news is that this form of collaborative creation is gaining a bit of acceptance. Duane alerts us to the story of a 17-year-old German woman whose critically acclaimed book has been found to have large chunks plagiarized from other sources. A few years back, when a similar situation arose in the US, the author Kaavya Viswanathan, was shunned -- even if some of us thought that was ridiculous and unfair. In this case, however, the author, Helene Hegemann, readily admits that she was "remixing" other works into her book -- and the critics still love it. Her book was nominated for the $20,000 prize of the Leipzig Book Fair even though the judges already knew about the plagiarism.

And, really, what's the problem here? Some might claim that it's unfair to the original authors whose work she used -- but the author of the largest segments, named Airen, is getting a ton of attention for Airen's own book, which received little actual attention when originally published. In fact, Amazon now notes that "customers who bought" Hegemann's book also ended up buying Airen's book. In the same way that remixes and mashups often drive people to buy the original music, it seems like remixed/mashedup books can do the same. It may be a big cultural leap for those who think there is "a way things must be done," but it seems that the younger generation has other ideas.

from the one-way-or-the-other dept

As noted here recently, London's National Portrait Gallery is involved in a legal tiff concerning whether the photos it put online of public domain portraits are public domain themselves. The Gallery insists they are not, and wants to prevent others from using them. However, jump across to this side of the pond and compare that response to what the Smithsonian is now saying, concerning its plan to get content more freely available and shared:

Content Usage: Establish a pan-Institutional policy for sharing and using the Smithsonian's digital content, with particular focus on Copyright and Public Domain policies that encourage the appropriate re-use and sharing of Smithsonian resources.

That sounds a lot better, and more in-tune with the mission of such a museum. To be fair, a few years back, the Smithsonian had its own troubles claiming copyright over public domain images, so perhaps it just takes a bit of time for these things to sink in.

from the fascinating! dept

While there's lots of attention being paid to the fact that some team has won the Netflix Prize (it probably won't be announced who until September), there's an interesting side story that's worth noting -- which is how important collaboration was in breaking through. Plenty of studies have shown that innovation happens much faster when you have the free and open sharing of information (rather than having it locked up, say, by patents), as that mixture of different approaches and ideas allows for breakthroughs to come much faster (in fact, studies have shown that much of the success in Silicon Valley came from the free sharing of info across companies as people rapidly moved around).

And, in fact, that's exactly what happened with the Netflix Prize. The first "team" to break the 10% finish line, BellKor, was actually a merger of a few separate teams, allowing them to combine different pieces of different approaches to actually leap ahead. So, rather than trying to hoard the idea for themselves to claim the entire prize themselves, they realized it was better to team up to make the real breakthrough.

But, then a second interesting thing happened. Since the rules allowed another 30 days for other teams to offer up solutions that beat the first one, a bunch of other teams realized that it was in their best interest to team up as well, in order to leap-frog the original team. So they created the aptly named Ensemble -- and, again, the merger of various teams and different approaches allowed them to jump forward. It's not clear who actually had the best solution (both teams claim they did), but it's nice to see yet another clear example of the value of collaboration in innovation, against the standard myth of the lone inventor having a "flash of genius." It's also interesting to see the game theory aspect of the "loser teams" recognizing that they had to team up in order to catch up with the leader in the space.